The Daily Beast

Mitt Romney used his New Hampshire victory speech to preview the line of attack he’ll pursue against President Obama this fall. Boy, was it dull.

Romney’s basic claim is that Obama doesn’t believe in American greatness, and he does. If that sounds familiar, that’s because it’s been the basic Republican template since Ronald Reagan ran against Jimmy Carter. Democrats apologize for America, belittle America, Europeanize America while Republicans believe that as long as Americans remember their greatness and retain their optimism, everything will turn out fine.

When watching election-night media commentary, always remember: pundits have a bias. They want an exciting race.

Mitt Romney sailing merrily toward a Republican nomination that many considered foreordained is not exciting. So all over cable television talking heads are claiming that Romney's inability to win more than a quarter of the vote in Iowa constitutes a loss.

The Iowa caucuses are just a day away, and it's hard to see how Mitt Romney can lose. Let me clarify. It's not hard to see how he can lose Iowa, but it is hard to see how Iowa can help lose him the nomination.

Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, calls Warner a tireless “policy wonk.” “Once he focuses on something it is all or nothing,” she says. As soon as he arrived in the Senate, Warner started cultivating ...

Many commentators will say the highlight of last night's Republican presidential debate was Michele Bachmann's attacks on Newt Gingrich for taking money from Freddie Mac. Not me. In my view, the highlight was Rick Perry endorsing the Bay of Pigs.

Midway through the debate, Perry suggested that the U.S. enforce a new "Monroe Doctrine" toward Latin America, "like we used against the Cubans in the '60s." Let's unpack that.

There are two ways a president can run for reelection. The first is to boast about your success in your first term, and promise to build on it in the next. That's what Dwight Eisenhower did in 1956; it's what Ronald Reagan did in 1984; it's what Bill Clinton did in 1996. For the strategy to work, Americans have to be relatively satisfied with their lot, and relatively optimistic about the future.

It's not easy for us liberals to find nice things to say about the GOP presidential field. But here goes: Perhaps 2011 will go down as the year when Republicans finally decided that having a president who knows something about public policy might not be such a bad thing after all.

What does America's disastrous bombing of Pakistani soldiers this week have to do with President Obama's much-ballyhooed trip to East Asia last week? Between them, they suggest that the Obama administration may be, finally, edging toward a foreign-policy doctrine.

Should the United States be permanently at war? Listen carefully to this week's Republican presidential debate on national security and the answer becomes pretty clear. For most of the major GOP candidates, the answer is yes.

A piece of advice for my conservative friends: cheer up.